Small black fine line tattoo of a sitting cat on the back of a woman's neck, with a tabby cat resting on her shoulder.

Small cat outline on the nape

Fine line · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A woman is photographed from behind, with her hair in a loose bun held by decorative clips. A small black outline tattoo of a sitting cat sits at the base of her neck, drawn with thin, simple linework and no shading. A tabby cat rests on her shoulder, and the warm pink striped curtains in the background frame the image.

Fine line Neck Cat Tabby cat Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Ada Penhallow's grey tabby, Tuppence, sat on the harbour wall at Porthkerrow every evening with her tail wrapped round her feet, facing out to sea as if she were the one waiting on the boats. I was nine when I first noticed. My father, Tom Carey, mended nets on the slipway and said cats were bad luck aboard, but Tuppence never once set foot on a boat.

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The winter the Marigold went missing, the whole town searched the coves. Ada sat on the wall every night with a lantern and the cat beside her, and nobody had the heart to tell her the sea keeps what it takes. I carried her soup up from the Anchor kitchen. She told me the cat had never been wrong about weather. "She sits like that when someone's coming home," Ada said. "Never when they've gone."

On the fourth night, Tuppence stood, stretched, and trotted down the steps towards the water. We followed her along the mole to find the Marigold's dinghy knocking against the bottom step, empty, oars shipped neatly as if someone had rowed it in and walked off up the lane. Nobody ever explained it. Tom reckoned a fisherman had come in on the tide and gone home to his wife in Newlyn, shamefaced.

Ada never sat on the wall again after that. Tuppence still did, every evening, upright and neat with her tail round her feet, watching the harbour mouth. Some nights I sit beside her too. I don't look at the water much. I watch the cat, because she's the only one who knows when to stop waiting.